A New Point of View in the Theory of Knot and Link Invariants

Abstract

Recent progress in string theory has led to a reformulation of quantum-group polynomial invariants for knots and links into new polynomial invariants whose coefficients can be understood in topological terms. We describe in detail how to construct the new polynomials and we conjecture their general structure. This leads to new conjectures on the algebraic structure of the quantum-group polynomial invariants. We also describe the geometrical meaning of the coefficients in terms of the enumerative geometry of Riemann surfaces with boundaries in a certain Calabi-Yau threefold.